If you want readers to act, instead of just read, you need to start with why you do what you do.

I’ve been thinking through the “why” of direct magick.

It started with this TED talk from Simon Sinek:

If you don’t have time to watch, here’s the summary: Most people fail to inspire action because they start with what they do (a list of products), then they how they do it (what makes their products different). That’s certainly what I’ve been doing, focusing on techniques like healing and the general idea of doing magick consciously.

But people who inspire action start with why. Apple’s is “Think different.” Martin Luther King’s was “When man’s laws conflict with God’s laws, man’s laws must change.” And once listeners buy into the Why, they’re motivated to act on the How and the What.

(But really, watch the video, it’s a great talk).

I’m no Steve Jobs, and I’m certainly no MLK. But it’s gotten me asking: “Why direct magick?” I’ll post my thoughts as I develop them over the next few days.

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I’m writing a book this year. It’s in outline form right now, so I can blog about the topics and figure out how to explain them. Basically the same topics as the blog, but organized to be easier to use, taking you through learning direct magick from the beginning.

I’ve read up on how to contact publishing houses. (Tip: Contact them with an idea for a book, not a written book. They’ll want to shape the presentation). And I know that no one makes money from occult books — my goal is to build a community and establish credentials for teaching, healing, etc.

But I need some advice: Self-publish or publishing house? I was leaning toward a publishing house for marketing and credibility, but I just read a great article on TechCrunch that said:

• Publishers do basically zero to promote most books. In fact, they want to see that you have a blog or other marketing platform before they’ll even talk to you.
• Publishers introduce a huge lag in getting your book out. You can do it alone in a few months, but it takes 1-2 years or more with a publisher.
• Direct quote: “Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me”. I can tell you from experience – nobody ever asked me who was my publisher when Penguin was my publisher.”

For authors, does this guy’s experience ring true? Particularly because he’s talking about tech, marketing and business books, and we’re talking about occult and magick.

And for everyone, what do you think about self-publishing vs going with a publishing house?

Thanks!

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I started this blog two years ago today, and I’m so glad I did. It’s exposed me to new ideas (thanks for the comments, everyone), and I’m better at writing and explaining magick because of it.

If you’ve thought about blogging, but you’re worried you don’t write well enough yet, here’s my advice: Get started. No one wrote well at first, except for professional authors, who already went through the pain of learning to write in books. The way to solve that problem? Write, get a friend to give you feedback, and write more.

Also, thank that friend for giving you real feedback instead of empty encouragement like “Looks great.” They risked making you upset and put in honest work because they care about you.

Don’t believe me? Check out my first few posts. They’re awful. Each one took me hours to write.

Two years later, I’m somewhere around decent. A “non-bad writer.” Which is really all you need for non-fiction.

You can do it, too. It’s just a matter of putting the time in.

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About a month ago, Frater Ashen posted that, when you do an evokation*, you should be able to see the spirit in front of you, and that if you can’t, you’re not doing it right.

*Evokation is a form of ritual magick for summoning spirits.

At the time, I thought he was talking about the spirit making a body you could see, like movie special effects. Which sounded pretty far fetched. But I don’t do evokation, so who am I to question another mage’s experience?

But there’s been more discussion about it, and it turns out I had a common, but wrong, impression. If you don’t have time to read those posts, here’s the summary:

• You don’t see the spirit plain as day. Instead, you see a shadowy form. Kind of like seeing a face in clouds — it’s clear enough that something’s there, but not movie quality special effects.
• An untrained person wouldn’t see anything. Even experienced mages who are new to evokation don’t see anything. So the spirit isn’t reflecting light, at least, not the way a normal object would.

My guess: The spirit is projecting itself into the visual parts of your mind. Which is basically the same way auras and psychic visions work. So let me talk about those for a minute.

Visions in Other Magick

Let’s start with astral projection, since I’ve studied that before. I worked with a friend, had him project, and watched what was happening. He connected to ethereal software (a fairly advanced software at that), which sent images to his mind, much the same way spirits and other ethereal software might send you words or ideas.

By connecting to the software’s connections, I was able to copy its messages and read them into my mind. They went to two spots: (1) The normal spot to read and write thoughts*, and (2) the visual centers, for sending images.

*Specifically, it reads and writes you pre-conscious thoughts. That’s where your thoughts form, slightly before you’re aware of them. It’s the default spot for most ethereal software to connect, since it works even if you haven’t learned to communicate in words.

So, I’m fairly confident that astral projection — both for out of body experiences, and for projecting into the astral plane — works by ethereal software sending messages to your visual centers, which gives you visions.

Those visions happen when you close your eyes. They’re not projected onto the physical world. But psychics also see auras, as a colored glow around a person — an image projected onto the physical world. And, while I haven’t specifically deconstructed auras, I do know that all other psychic intuitions come from ethereal software, sending messages to the person. So it’s a small step to think that psychic auras work the same way: The ethereal software sends messages to their visual centers, rather than interacting with light in the outside world.

So, that’s my best guess on what’s happening when mages see the spirits they evoke: The thing you see is an image projected into your visual centers by the ethereal software.

Preparing Your Mind to See Spirits

“I get what you’re saying, but how is that useful?” you ask. A perfectly fair question. And one that I wouldn’t write if I didn’t have an answer.

From the posts about visual evokation, I understand that many mages, even experienced mages, can’t see spirits. And that they find this irksome. So, there would be value in a technique for preparing your mind to see visual evokation faster, or more reliably, than you can through practice alone.

And now that we have a model — that you see spirits when ethereal software connects to the visual parts of your mind — we can make such a technique. In fact, I already have a technique for preparing your mind for messages from ethereal software. We’ll just adapt it.

Here’s the gist: Ethereal software can only communicate with your mind if your mind is used to the software’s signature. If it’s not, your mind will resist, and the software can’t connect properly. Each area of your mind needs to be set up separately, so even if you’re used to communicating intuitions or words, you might not be set up for images.

Spirits have the same requirements as ethereal software. If you can’t communicate with spirits, these techniques should help. By the way, some spirits can shift their message to your signature, which lets them communicate with unprepared minds.

Here’s the quick version of the technique. (Full series on it here. Note: In that post, “system” means “ethereal software”.)

• Find the spot the software wants to connect to you. (Details below).
• Build energy in the software’s signature. Safety note: Build this energy yourself. Don’t have a spirit or another mage do it, or it won’t align to your underlying signature, giving you headaches.
• Move the energy to where the software wants to connect to you, and hold it there. After 5-10 minutes, you’ll feel your mind shift and accept the new signature. When that happens, release the energy (grounding).
• Repeat every few hours until this stops making you tired. That means that spot in your mind is adjusted to accept the new signature. This usually takes a few days to a week.
• Expand the area: Same as before, but let the energy overflow that one area in your mind, so it’s saturating a larger area around it. Again, repeat this until it stops making you tired.
• Optionally, expand the area one more time, just to be sure you have enough of your mind prepared for the software.
• Now, do your evokation again. When you feel the connections, guide it in to the area you’ve just prepared.

(Note: Some steps in here weren’t in the series I linked to, since I wrote it a while ago. I’ll make an updated version soon).

Details on finding the spot where the ethereal software wants to connect: You don’t need to know where your visual centers are. You’re going to let the software connect, notice its connections, and use that to find the areas of your mind.

First, learn to recognize ethereal software connecting to you. (“System” = “ethereal software” in that post, too). The gist is: Quiet your energy, connect to something unusual, and feel for a signature that’s not your own. If you work with spirits, you can also ask them to make an obvious connection, so you can learn what to look for.

Then, look for connections while communicating normally with some spirits, so you learn to recognize the spot where they connect for sending ideas.

Now, do an evokation. At the point in the ritual where the spirit would manifest, feel in your mind for connections in a signature that’s not your own. One should be in the spot where you’d normally feel connections when talking with a spirit, and the other should be in your visual centers. That’s where you want to send the energy.

Also, while doing the evokation, make note of the signature of those connections. Maybe even make energy in that signature, while they’re connected, just to practice. Because that’s the signature you’ll want for the rest of the technique.

One tip: You can usually get the ethereal software to connect to you just by focusing on a symbol associated with that style of magick, or focusing on the ritual. It won’t send you visual messages (and will probably only connect for sending ideas, not images), but if you forget the signature, having it connect to you should help.

Comments

If you try it, let me know how it goes. I’ve verified this technique for aligning a mage’s mind to ethereal software, but I haven’t verified the mechanism for the visible manifestation of spirits. Right now it’s just an educated guess.

And if you’re up for a direct magick practitioner joining you for an evokation, let me know. I’m mostly in Albuquerque and San Francisco, but I travel a fair amount of my day job.

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There’s a difference between focusing on results, and focusing on mechanics.

If you’re focused on results, you do what works right now. Then you tweak it so it works a little better.

If you’re focused on mechanics — how magick works — you don’t spend much time tweaking. Instead, you disassemble what works right now, figure out how each step works, then reassemble it into something new.

Making something new requires a lot of parts. Understanding one step probably won’t help. So you won’t see much immediate improvement of your results. But if you stick with it and understand all the steps, you’ll be able to make a new technique, and you’ll see a big jump in results.

Mechanics is a longer path. But it leads to a more interesting and useful place.

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The inner-workings of manifesting — magick for creating luck — and how to use that knowledge to get better results.

This is the second half of Mike’s questions. (First half here). He’s asking how to do manifesting for his business:

I like the idea of creating computer programs to command my magick. Is it as simple as engaging my ‘mental muscles’ and [...] giving direct commands?

I played around with a magickal program that I would use for my business that would influence clients to do business with me [...]

First, I want to make a distinction between making ethereal software and commanding ethereal software.

I used to program (non-magickal) software in C++, a programming language. It’s a specialized skill that requires years of training before you can make useful software. Think of making ethereal software like this: A specialized, advanced skill that most people don’t need.

At the other end of the spectrum, everyone uses computer software. That’s how you’re viewing this page right now: In Firefox, or Internet Explorer, or Chrome. You tell it what you want (you type magickofthought.com into the URL bar), and the software handles the rest. This is like commanding ethereal software.

In the middle of those extremes (making vs using), there are scripting languages like Logo, the drawing program from the 80s. (See video).

Logo gives you commands to make a turtle walk forward and turn. You use them to write programs to draw triangles and stars and stuff. You’re programming the turtle, but the program is meaningless outside of the turtle-drawing software.

When someone talks about “Specifying what they want to happen with their business,” that’s almost always a turtle-drawing situation. They’re using already-written ethereal software that handles the details, and the person is telling it what shape they want.

Magick for influencing events, by the way, is called “manifesting.” And the ethereal software you use for it needs to be programmed for manifesting. Ethereal software for energy healing wouldn’t know how to do manifesting any more than notepad knows how to search the web.

So, back to the question: If you first engage your mental muscles (the ones for communicating with ethereal software, not the ones for moving energy around your body), then connect to the ethereal software for manifesting (not for energy healing), and tell it what you want, it should execute those instructions.

This might sound like a really long way of saying “Yes, program what you want into reality.” But the details tell us a lot:

First, if you don’t have ethereal software for manifesting, you won’t get anywhere. That’s the first debugging step. I’ll do a post on how to find ethereal software sometime soon. (February maybe?)

Second, it tells you what sort of exercises to do: Communicating, not moving energy. Practicing with energy is a good way to initially find your mental muscles, but you’ll need to practice communicating with ethereal software for a while before you can get good manifesting results.

Third, it tells you that these exercises on aligning your mind to the signature of your ethereal software should help. (Note: That post was from when I used the term “systems” for “ethereal software.”)

Fourth, if you work with spirits, it tells you that asking them for a different piece of ethereal software might get you better results. Just like different computer software is specialized for different tasks (Word and Excel can both write text, but one is probably a better tool for the problem you’re solving right now), some ethereal software is better for business-related manifesting than others.

Fifth, once you learn to communicate with ethereal software in words, rather than intents, you can ask it for the “list of commands,” and learn about other things you can ask it to do.

At some point, I’ll do a full walkthrough on how to learn manifesting, but first, I’ll need posts on finding ethereal software, preparing your mind for communication, and a few other things. It’s coming, though.

Mike: Did that answer you? Everyone else: Got questions? Leave a comment.

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Mike asked a bunch of great questions about mental muscles and learning direct magick. It sounds like he’s starting out with magick, learning to move energy around his body, and finding his mental muscles, so this will probably help a lot of readers.

Let’s start with the first question:

What is the litmus test for knowing that our ‘mental muscles’ have been full engaged?

First, let me say how cool it is to see questions like this from someone just starting working with energy. I didn’t know enough about the inner-workings of magick to even ask this question until I’d been practicing for 10+ years.

Now, the answer: Realize that it’s not one mental muscle for all your magick, just like it’s not one muscle for your whole body. Different tasks use different muscles, in your body and in your mind. The mental muscles for moving energy around your body are totally different than the mental muscles for communicating with spirits.

For one mental muscle, you’ll know it’s fully engaged when you can use it without feeling tired. That’s because the fatigue is caused by the mental muscle waking up (which uses a lot of power) and by it connecting to the rest of your mind (which causes your mind to make new pathways, also using a lot of power). So, the mental muscle is more or less fully active when the thing you’re trying to do is easy and non-tiring. And successful — no prizes for not being tired but also not getting results.

How to know when all your mental muscles are awake? My advice is, don’t make a big deal about that. Nothing special happens when you engage all your mental muscles.

Instead, focus on activating all the mental muscles involved in the task you want to accomplish. For example, if you want to learn communication, you’ll need the muscles specifically for communication, and a few involved in connecting to a person’s mind (to help the communication muscles put thoughts in your mind). But you can skip the muscles involved in other tasks like energy healing. This will help you focus on the task at hand, get useful results sooner, and motivate yourself to keep practicing.

Next question:

When I practice engaging my ‘mental muscles’ my focus is pulled towards the center of my brain, my mental state become less cluttered, and locked in. In this state I have practiced directing energy from one hand to the other, and mentally controlling the flow of energy with success. Am I close?

What you describes sounds like focusing, which is good. And being able to easily move energy around mentally, without making a big production of the visualization, is also good. It sounds like you’re on the right track.

You seem like you want to know where you are and what the next steps are. So, I’d guess that your mental muscles for controlling energy are awake and active. Which is awesome. Next, you’ll want to activate some other mental muscles, so you can work with other aspects of magick. Here’s what I’d recommend next:

• Mental posture. Learn to consciously engage the mental muscles you’re using.
• Learn to make connections. That will awaken a different set of mental muscles.
• Also, check out this series on awakening mental muscles. The first few posts should have useful tips, and the later posts will give you something to work toward.

If those are too basic, I can point you to some advanced posts. (Which I totally have).

Also, let me know if those answers answered you, and keep me posted on your progress. Most of the techniques I gave you are a simplified version of things I use, or things I’ve taught to friends, but I haven’t taught mental activation to someone just starting with energy yet. So let me know how they work.

I’ll do the second half of Mike’s question — about manifesting with ethereal software — tomorrow.

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This post continues the series from last week on the three defining aspects of direct magick.

Whether you command forces with symbols, intentions or words, relying on ethereal software has two limitations:

• If the force doesn’t know how to do X, no amount of skill at issuing commands will make X happen.
• You understand what you do. If you issue commands to forces, that’s what you’ll understand — not what the force does to implement those commands.

That’s why most mages, at some point, learn to drive magick themselves. Here’s how it works:

Instead of channeling a force, you connect directly to the thing you want to affect. So to heal a friend’s knee, you connect to the energy around their knee, along with the pathways that connect that energy to their cells. Which is what the ethereal software would do if you asked it to heal their knee.

You can use those connections to look at the energy and pathways, and see how they’re different in injured vs healthy tissue, how they change as the knee heals, and watch what the ethereal software does to drive the healing.

You can also use those connections to change the energy and pathways. That’s how the ethereal software does healings, and you can do everything it does. In fact, copying it is just the first step. Once you understand the forces you channel and how they drive healing, you can improve on their techniques. It won’t happen right away, but it will happen.

Driving magick yourself doesn’t feel like doing a ritual, or focusing on a visualization, or any of the dozen other ways mages send out intent / commands. Driving magick consciously is a direct, visceral experience, like molding clay with your hands. It’s tactile and intimate. You begin to learn how magick works, not by imagining how it might work, but by seeing how each connection, each signature, and each pathway work together to make magick happen.

I used healing as a concrete example, but this applies to most domains of magick. Only manifesting — magick for predicting and influencing events — requires ethereal software, as far as I know.

How to Experience Magick Consciously

Consciously experiencing magick takes two things:

• Driving magick with your own mind, rather than relying on ethereal software.
• Making the magick-driving parts of your mind conscious.

I call those magick-driving parts “mental muscles.” Engaging them is the difference between imagining vs doing magick, just like engaging your leg muscles is the difference between imagining walking vs actually moving.

Each mental muscle does something different. Some are for communicating with spirits and ethereal software. Others are for making sensory connections to directly experience magick. Many are special-purpose, for things like recognizing the signatures of different tissues and injuries.

Everyone has mental muscles, but in most people, they’re hibernating and atrophied from disuse. As you practice a new skill, the mental muscles involved in that skill awaken. (Other mental muscles that are not used by that skill will remain dormant. Just like doing pullups won’t help your legs).

Most non-direct mages have a few strong mental muscles, for the tasks they do often (channeling ethereal software, building energy in their body, etc), and a lot of weak or hibernating mental muscles, for the parts of magick they don’t practice (like communicating with forces in words). A lot of learning direct magick is about awakening those other muscles.

The other side is making those mental muscles conscious. See, driving magick yourself unconsciously doesn’t feel much different than most magick: You use symbolic visualizations and rituals to communicate your intent, and let the mental muscles work out the details.

But once you make your mental muscles conscious, you become aware of each change they make as they work your magick. Not just the broad strokes (“The mental muscle healed that injury”), but each detail (“The mental muscle connected this energy layer to that magickal structure, changed its signature from X to Y, and turned on power from this core path”).

Seeing those details as you do magick gives you a visceral, intuitive understanding of how magick works, which lets you design new techniques. I’ll go into how to make your mental muscles conscious later in this series, too.

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Shadowmist asks:

Visualization is something that I have more or less struggled with for years while trying to learn about magick. I feel more than I see. [...] I was wondering if you had any advice on how to better experience a visualization without “seeing” clear images.

I don’t do much visualization myself. Definitely not of the detailed “Imagine a glowing mist filling your lungs” variety.

For me, it’s more of seeing paths (lines, basically) and feeling the signatures* of those paths. So when I talk about seeing some part of magick, I just mean “sense” or “observe,” or a metaphoric “See what I mean.”

*Energy has a signature, but so do structures like paths. The signatures of structures determine which types of energy interact with them.

Same with auras. I’ve never seen auras. But I can feel the signature of the person’s energy and get the same information as psychics who see auras, which is what really matters.

So, I guess my advice is: Don’t worry about visualization or seeing-in-the-literal-sense. Focus on understanding. And if feeling magick is more natural for you than seeing it, that’s fine. That’s how I am too. Go with what feels natural.

Edit: Be sure to read Ananael’s comment below.

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Responding to my last post on healing throat colds, Kol asks:

The etheric software you are working with is from some established energy construct? How did you know to hook into ‘that’ particular etheric software system ‘for colds’ and not another ‘for healing’? And this entity; is this entity your ‘program analyst’ who you call in to check your progress?

I’m filing this under “advanced” because Kol is asking what I, personally, do. Which is probably not what most mages would do. Most mages would learn an established healing style, like Reiki, and work with its ethereal software. (That’s where the Reiki energy comes from, and once you learn to communicate with ethereal software, you can ask for a variety of things).

But back to Kol’s question. The ethereal software I use was made by a group of spirits I work with. Whenever someone gives the “credentials” of spirits they work with, like “Ascended ancients” or “From the Orion cluster” or something, it sounds silly to me. So I’ll just say that they’re among the most skilled spirits I know, and more skilled than any human mage I’ve ever met, and I’m confident their ethereal software is good stuff.

A couple of years ago, I asked this spirit group for some ethereal software that handles psychic intuitions, for Lisa to use. That psychic software recommended this as their main healing software. I don’t know how you’d get to it without networking into groups of spirits, though.

It’s the same healing software for both colds and regular healing. I just asked it to heal the cold, instead of healing hives or tendon inflammation. If you have a particular healing software, how would you know what it can do? Ask. Most software will respond to a request for “Instructions” and “Usage instructions.” But first, you have to communicate in words, not intents.

The spirit I talked with maintains the ethereal software I was using. I think he was involved in the initial programming, but haven’t asked. (I tend to only ask about things that are immediately relevant, skipping a lot of background questions). He’s interested in improving that ethereal software, so he’s always glad to get my feedback and input. He also helped me design the techniques for healing Lisa’s hives.

Why did I go with this, instead of Reiki or some other established healing style? Two reasons. First, I know these guys, so I know they do good work. I’ve talked with the spirits who made the Reiki software, and they’re skilled too, but I trust the spirits I know more. Second, I know the spirits who made this software, so they’re happy to walk me through things for as long as I need. So I get better support using this software than another style, even if that style is more widely-used by people.

So, what’s the point? Well, you can’t summon these spirits with rituals or symbols, so I can’t tell you how to get there beyond telling you to network with spirits the same way you’d network with business contacts: Tell them what you’re working on, ask them to recommend someone who can help, and see where you get. But hopefully this peek into what I do gives you an idea of where you’re going and what to work on.

And if you want to do some healing right now? I’d go with an established style like Reiki. Assuming you’re somewhat experienced with direct magick, just focus on the symbols, notice where the ethereal software connects to you, and connect to it. Or go to a healer, find where the ethereal software connects to them, and make your own connection. Either way, you wind up with a connection to the ethereal software, so you can communicate with it in words, ask for its instructions and usage instructions, and learn to use it.

That sounds like a useful guide, actually: Using Reiki healing via direct magick, focusing on advanced commands you can use by communicating with words instead of intents. What do you think? Should I post that?

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